Lullaby
by MattUF1
Summary: She's pale and thin, with dull blonde hair hanging in tangled waves to her waist. Dark circles frame her once bright eyes. She is me.


** Chapter 1**

"Alright, Penny. Why don't we begin with you telling me what you've been up to since we saw each other last Thursday?" The gentle female voice coaxes as kind blue eyes watch me from behind the lenses of her glasses. I adjust uncomfortably, smoothing the worn denim of my jeans. Glancing at my reflection in the mirrored wall of Dr. Fabray's office, I barely recognize the person I see.

She's pale and thin, with dull blonde hair hanging in tangled waves to her waist. Dark circles frame her once bright eyes. Her cheekbones are prominent in her gaunt face and her lips are cracked from exposure to the sun. Her clothes hang off of her bony frame unbecomingly, hiding the waning figure that used to fill them out.

She is me.

"Well," I begin in a meek voice that never belonged to me, "on Friday, Dad and I painted the new hen house. Saturday, my mother made a chicken for dinner and my sister came over. On Sunday, my brother asked me if I wanted to go hunting with him."

"And, did you go?" Dr. Fabray asks, watching me closely. I shake my head.

"No," I manage to say, looking at my dirty fingernails, bitten to the nub and filthy.

"When is the last time you showered?" She inquires, making a quick note on her legal pad.

"I…" I trail off, swallowing. I can't, for the life of me, remember. "I don't know."

"Have any of your friends from California tried to get in touch?" She asks, making me flinch involuntarily as I envision the six faces I left behind.

"No," I tell her. The truth is, I tossed my cell phone out the window of my father's pickup truck and never bothered to get a new one. I'd also deleted my Facebook account and my email, so if any of my friends had attempted to contact me, I wouldn't know. But, I'm not going to tell Dr. Fabray, because I don't want to talk to any of them. I don't want to think about that time in my life, when I thought I'd been happier than I ever had been. I don't want to think about those six people who I miss so much that it physically hurts my heart.

I want to die.

I've tried, you know. To die. I took a handful of my mother's Ambien four months ago with half a bottle of red wine. From what I'm told, my brother found me face down on the floor of the bathroom and forced me to throw up. Since then, I've been in mandatory therapy and I'm on constant cuckoo watch by my entire family. My mother is finally letting me go to the bathroom alone, but that's only because they put a padlock on the medicine cabinet. Anything I could possibly commit suicide with has been locked away out of my reach. I'm a twenty-six year old toddler.

But really, they have nothing to worry about, because I've lost the will to even _kill_ myself.

"Why haven't you showered, Penny?" Dr. Fabray asks me, she pushes up her glasses and studies me.

I know exactly why I haven't showered, it's just hard to admit it out loud because all it does is add to this empty feeling inside of me that keeps saying I'm not a real person anymore. That's how I feel I guess, if I had to put a definition to it. That I've fallen out of society, that all those things I used to dream about having are gone.

So why bother?

"I—I don't really…know." I finish lamely and swallow sharply before lowering my head so my stringy hair falls into my face and hides it. I can't look at myself for too long without wanting to throw up. I don't know who this person is that keeps staring back at me. I don't want anyone else to see her either.

Dr. Fabray nods again, writing something else down on her pad, I'm sure it's something about my short answers. I never get to read her notes anyways, she'd save herself some paper if she just put _lost cause_ in big, bold letters and let me go home.

"Do you have any plans for the rest of the week?" She asks, I know she has this list of questions but honestly, if I didn't care enough to change out of the shirt I painted the hen house with, she should know that I don't have anything else going on.

With a distant shrug, I shake my head. "Whatever Dad has to do around the farm, probably."

"Penny," she calls my name and I realize I haven't been looking at her. When I do, she's moved to the edge of her chair "Your dad tells me you've been sleeping a lot during the day. Are you having trouble sleeping at night?"

Of course it's hard to sleep at night. It's hard to close my eyes at all. I'm usually tired, it's something I've kind of adjusted too, the heavy eyes and extra weight it feels like my legs are carrying (though I know I'm at least fifteen pounds thinner then I was when I moved back home).

"I sleep fine." I finally say, again looking away to check the clock on the wall. I'm not subtle, I don't want to be here.

There's a sudden, familiar ding of an old egg timer and I'm standing before Dr. Fabray can. "Penny?" She calls to me as I'm already heading for the door. I stop, my hands on the handle of the door, I don't turn around. "I want you to shower for me tonight, okay?"

"I—I," taking a breath, I nod slowly. "I will." The answer is really just to end this now, to get me out of this place faster.

She says something about seeing me on Thursday but I'm halfway down the hall when she finishes.

This is a nice building. It has tall ceilings and fancy marble floors, more windows then a church. There's a big desk with protective glass over it where the receptionist sits, you know, in case one of us wackos goes crazy and starts throwing things.

The lobby is quiet as I cast my eyes down and walk out. My dad is sitting in one of the seats, closing a magazine he'd been reading as he sees me and stands up.

I stop and let him pass in front of me, out the door I follow him to the truck and grip both sides of the door frame to pull myself up and into it.

The diesel engine roars to life as I fold my hands over my lap and stare out the window to my right.

"Penny?" He calls me and I cast him a sideways glance. That's when he gently reaches over me and grabs the seatbelt hanging along the side and pulls it across. Latching it for me, like I'm a _child_.

I'm quiet for the entire ride home, just watching the small town I grew up in pass me by as Dad talks about various things around us. He mentions something about the grocery store closing. They're building a bigger one downtown.

Suddenly, as it always happens, I'm accosted with darkness in my own mind. My eyes have closed again in the truck on the ride home and it's dark. Save the glow of a window above me where the moon is shining through.

It's a familiar image, a memory that's terrorizing me and I'm losing myself in it. I feel like I'm suffocating, trying to turn my head to catch a breath as it's buried in the cold, damp mattress that's been stained with _my_ tears.

I force my eyes to open, my heart in my throat as I realize we're stopped at a light. Dad's looking at me but I don't do the same, I stare out the window, watching as the light turns green and truck starts to move again.

The business end of the town slips away as we get closer to the farm, now the surroundings are trees and a few scatterings of houses.

Eventually I see my parent's house at the end of the long driveway that is bracketed with fencing to keep the cows and horses out of the road. The grass if perfectly mowed, Dad does it two times every week.

Once we finally pull up to the house, there's another car in the driveway, the white Camry my sister drives. She's been around pretty much every day. I've spent more time with her in the last five months then I did for the first sixteen years of my life when we were living together.

The truck stops and I turn to see Dad watching me again. His lips are pursed like he wants to say something but when I look away again, he starts to leave the vehicle and I unlatch my seatbelt and do the same.

I walk up the three steps that lead to the porch and shiver a bit, Octobers are much colder in Omaha then they were when I lived in California.

The temperature inside the house is warmer. Mom keeps the heat running pretty consistently now. It's hard for me to get warm these days.

Their home is pretty much what you would expect from a farming family. The walls are white and covered with random paintings that they'd collected over the years. There are things that we kids made in school scattered around, Mom liked to frame our art projects from elementary school and hang them around.

Carefully removing my shoes, I feel my feet sink into the white, shag carpet that goes from the entrance to the living room and changes to tile as you make the transition into the kitchen on the left of the front door.

To the right is the staircase where the bedrooms are, there are three up there. Growing up I shared a room with my sister, my brother (who was four years older than Abby and six years older than me) had his own room and my parents had theirs.

Now though, I share a room with my dad. After the incident with the pills he won't let me sleep alone anymore. He put a cot in there and took the lock of my door.

I hear talking from the kitchen, it's my mom and sister. I don't stop to listen, I just move from the doorway to the living room as my dad goes to where they are. I sit down on the couch and quickly flip on the TV to create some noise in the room. I turn to Nickelodeon and see a cartoon on there.

That's what I watch now, though I don't really _watch_ it, it's just on and it's meaningless and that's enough for me.

_"Did the starfish have boxer shorts on, cause you might have been watching Nickelodeon."_

His voice, like all their voices, is still so clear in my mind. I can hear them constantly. Even now, sitting on the couch I sit in the middle, it's _my _spot, when my dad sits to the left of me, I feel strange. Like I should ask him to move, that's not _his _spot. But he always sits next to me, at the dinner table, on the couch.

He's always around now.

But he never calls me Slugger anymore.

"I half expected you to be holding onto your teddy bear." Abby's voice draws me out of my own mind and I glance up to look at her. She looks older than she really is. Abby's only twenty-eight but she looks like she's almost forty. Her life has been filled with disappointment. She wanted to be so many things, I know she did because she used to tell me.

Instead she fell in love at seventeen and got married to young, tied down to this town and found out the boy she loved was just that, a boy. Even now, at thirty, her husband acts like he's seventeen. It's another reason why Abby comes around so often. She'd rather be here in this misery then at home in her own.

"You used to love this show." She says, slumping down heavily beside me and tucking her legs up underneath her.

That's when I refocus on the TV and realize it's an old episode of Rocko's Modern Life. She's right; I used to watch this show like it was my job growing up. There was just something about Rocko I loved, he was so sweet.

Reaching next to me, I grab the remote and hold it to her. "You can change it if you want."

"I—I," she hesitates, gently pushing my hand away. "It's fine." And again I feel like I'm broken. Abby used to give me hell about everything, usually just because she enjoyed fighting with me. Now, she's too nice, she doesn't argue with me, she actually spends time with me. We're sisters, so of course we always loved each other, but we were unbelievably different growing up.

Abby was a loner, she was independent and had a few scattered friends. I was the prom queen; I wanted everyone to see me. We shared a room, but nothing else. Not even hair color, as soon as I dyed mine a brighter shade of blonde, she immediately made hers black.

I'm sure it's all part of suicide watch, like I might try to smash my head into the television.

I may _want _to die, but I'm not going to make a mess of it.

"I uh, I was gonna do my nails, maybe clean them up. Do you want me to do yours?"

Swallowing heavily, I tug at a loose tear in my worn out jeans and stare at the television again. This is Abby's way of trying to coax me into the shower. "My nails are fine." I say, they're not. There is a dark coloring of dirt underneath of them and bits of paint staining the cuticles.

Abby scoffs a bit. "I suppose, if you're going for that _Hunger Games _look." She finishes with a bit of a laugh in her throat and I close my hands, tucking them into my lap. "C'mon Penelope, I can paint them up and make them look pretty."

"No," I say with probably more mirth then I've used in my voice in months. I don't want to look _pretty_. I'm _not _pretty.

She shifts uncomfortably next to me. "You need to clean yourself up, Penny."

_Why? _I think, but don't ask aloud. Why do I need to clean up? What's the point of washing my hair or changing my clothes? I'm not going anywhere.

I can see my mom and dad leering in the doorway and now there are too many people in the room. I stand up and tuck my hands into my pockets, my head down so my hair can hide me again.

"Where are you going?" Abby asks from her seat.

I start walking. "I have to pee." With that, I disappear into the downstairs bathroom. The same one where I took all the pills and had my brother cram his fingers down my throat and make me throw up.

The same one where the medicine cabinet is now locked and the latch on this door is gone too. I remember he wanted to take off all the doors in the damn house, my mom wouldn't let him. But they both agreed on the locks.

Closing the lid on the toilet, I sit down and take a long, deep breath.

I remember when I made the decision to come home, the reason behind it was because I thought it would be a place where I could feel safe. That maybe if I ran far enough away I could leave all the terror behind.

It didn't work, of course it didn't work. The idea that leaving California would force all of this away was ridiculous. No, it's there, it's constantly there when I close my eyes, when the sun sets, I'm back in that _van_. _Begging_ for help. My voice muffled and lost.

I can't move, I can't breathe.

I want to die, God I want to _die…_

Leaning forward to rest my head on my hands, I stare at the linoleum of the bathroom floor and decide that six is as good a time as any to go to bed.

Food sounds terrible, I just want to sleep. I wish I could take something, a jug of NyQuil and just fade away.

Because all I'm going to do is lay there until my body can't stay awake anymore and just hope I'm not haunted by any nightmares.

_Knock, knock, knock_

"Penny?" My dad's voice only calls my name once. "You okay?" He asks hesitantly.

Slowly, I push myself up, suddenly exhausted as I stand. Without answering, I turn the handle on the door and open it. He takes a few steps back and looks down as if he's unsure of himself and I give him a slight look before finding a spot on the carpet to study. "I'm gonna go to bed."

That's when my mom comes in from the kitchen, her smile as bright as it can be. It's nothing like I remember it though. "Sweetheart, you really need to wash up. Just let me wash your hair and your hands, they're a mess." She's prying, her own beautiful hair tied up in a bun, she's got her sleeves rolled up and a towel over her shoulder from cooking. "Please?"

Finally I look at her. She's taken a few steps towards me and is running the towel through her fingers nervously.

At this point, it's just easier to concede. "Okay," I say and she visibly relaxes and I feel stupid because I have to fight not to run away from her. There's a shame being around my mom, I can't explain it but this is a woman who used to take me dress shopping, who taught me how to do my makeup and hair. She helped me learn how to be pretty.

Now, I'm so ugly and worthless that it feels wrong to see her smile.

I don't deserve it.

Dad steps away and Abby looks like she wants to follow when Mom comes up to me and gently places her hand on my back. I let her guide me up the stairs to the bathroom up there.

She closes the door behind us and I move to lean against it. Mom starts up the water in the tub and lets it run before turning and sitting on the edge of the bathtub, doing her best _not _to look at me.

"I'm gonna make it warm, I think you should get in, Honey. It might do you some good to soak." Her tone is tepid, nervous as she talks to me and it makes me want to leave because it feels so wrong.

I cross my arms around my middle. "Mom," I try but she's standing again and gently coming towards me.

"It'll be okay, it's just you and me."

She's wrong, but she doesn't know it. It's never just her and me. It's never _just _me. They're always with me. _Inside _of me.

Tormenting me.

That's when I realize she's unbuttoning my big flannel shirt and I tense up immediately. She feels this and stops. She's trying to look in my eyes but my hair shields them.

I want this to be over, I don't want her to look at me like that anymore. Like she's trying to recognize who I am, it's a pointless effort.

Her little girl isn't here anymore.

So I undo the buttons myself and suddenly my shirt is falling off my shoulders and I feel like I'm three feet tall. I take off my jeans but leave my panties on and my mom doesn't argue with that.

Still hugging myself, I step into the tub and feel the hot water sting my skin. Slowly, I slide down into a seated position and tuck my knees up under my chin, wrapping my arms around them.

That's when I hear the water slosh around behind me and out of the corner of my eye I see Mom dunking a plastic cup.

Gently, her fingers thread through my hair and she starts pouring water through it. I tilt my head back just a bit at her coaxing and soon enough I feel her fingers rubbing shampoo into my scalp.

My mother is a farm wife. She tends to the animals and helped build the hen house. Her hands are worn and calloused but this is the most tender I've even known her to be.

Mom takes her time; as if she's afraid that once I'm out of this tub she'll never be able to get me back in. She washes my hair thoroughly, then cleans my hands with soap and uses a rag to wipe at my face.

Once I'm out, she wraps a towel around me and I do my best to dry off, it's cold again and I'm shivering when I see her reach out, like she wants to hug me for just a second before pulling away.

All I can think is that my own mother is too disgusted to hug me.

Not that I blame her, I don't deserve to be loved.

As I lay in bed that night, waiting for fatigue to lull me to sleep, I hear the sounds of my dad snoring and realize that my life will never be anything else but this. Sharing a room with my dad and getting sponge baths from my mother.

I don't really believe in God anymore, but I pray every night for him to take my life and end this misery I'm drowning in.


End file.
